Recipes from the Wagstaff Miscellany - 38 Creteyney

Recipes from the Wagstaff Miscellany (Beinecke MS 163)

This manuscript is dated about 1460.

The 200 (approx.) recipes in the Wagstaff miscellany are on pages 56r through 76v.

Images of the original manuscript are freely available on the Yale University Library website.

I have done my best to provide an accurate, but readable transcription. Common abbreviations have been expanded, the letters thorn and yogh have been replaced with their modern equivalents, and some minor punctuation has been added.

Copyright © 2013 by Daniel Myers, MedievalCookery.com

-=-=-

38.  Creteyney
Take capons and othre fowlys perboile hem dyse hem cast hem yne a pott withe cowe mylke & boyle hit ther withe drawe payndmayne withe som of the mylke and put to gedyre take sodyn eyrone hew the white & cast ther to sesyne hit up with poudyr sigure & safferyne & salt and a ley hit up withe yolkes of eyrone sodyne harde & frye heme a lytylle ley heme in disches poure the sewe a bouyne and floresche hit withe anneys in comfite.

-=-=-

There are a number of recipes with names similar to "cretonne", and in general they involve a broth made from milk thickened or colored with eggs.  The version in Forme of Cury is shorter and less complicated than the one above, but still fits the stereotype.

TXXIV - FOR TO MAKE CRAYTOUN. Tak checonys and schald hem and seth hem and grvnd gyngen' other pepyr and comyn and temper it up wyth god mylk and do the checonys theryn and boyle hem and serve yt forthe.  [Forme of Cury (England, 1390)]

There is also a cretonne recipe in Noble, but it reads more like a recipe for fried chicken than a sort of soup.  I suspect that it may be an error in which the start of a cretonne recipe was joined with the end of a recipe for funnel cakes.

To mak cratonnes tak chekins and sethe them fley them and quarter them then grind pepper bred and comyne and boile the chekins in mylk then swinge eggs flour and hony togedure and put faire grece in a possuet and cast in the bater and stirr it till it be in many and serue it as friturs. [A Noble Boke off Cookry (England, 1468)]